The Indian Inverse Brand Bargain Theory

A few days ago my friend told me that he didn’t finish the biscuits we had bought last night. Not owing to lack of appetite, but the act of finding an odd insect inside it usually found in swamps.
Well, it was a major biscuit brand and hence things like this are not supposed to happen. But we just purchased another one of the same brands after carefully discarding the one with the insect corpse.

This was not the first time that a so-called premium product has failed to live up to its expectations. I remember products marketed with extensive life unable to maintain durability beyond six months. But that doesn’t change the fact microeconomics works in India. We Indians have a high but false perception that only companies which can shell millions of rupees and get Miss World to market them are the only ones which could assure quality. I personally cannot vouch where this mindset comes from but I am pretty sure that such thoughts are ingrained from an early age possibly by the way we are taught to.

Photo Courtesy: Debajyoti Das

It could also be due to the subconscious West-philousness. We find such reflections in the fair and handsome creams which are marketed by Bollywood kings. Brand consciousness goes a long way in affecting dynamics of micro-economics. What we tend to seek defines what is being made and hence affects fortunes of millions. If multinationals could convince individuals when they are children then generational change would be possible where consumerism will be driven by brands and not the actual quality of a product.

We find such incidents happening pretty much in all aspects of life. The disgruntled consumer arguing with a roadside vendor for twenty rupees would never question the two thousand rupee shirt put up for sale in Forum Mall. OLA could charge six hundred during peak hours but an extra fifty rupee request by an auto-rickshaw is frowned upon. Such behavior stems from the fact that we believe that the un-branded-live-for-a-day vendor is trying to cheat us into buying a commodity for making huge profits. Common sense tells us that if she had made such profits she need not be selling the unbranded kerchief sweat drenched on a pavement at noon at the entrance of the subway.

We are made to believe that carrots sold in supermarkets are better than the others though both of them were cultivated on the same fields. My friend recalled a conversation with an autorickshaw driver that who told him that he will take him to a place for what OLA charges him. During the journey, he was told that it was difficult to even to get three savaris in a single day stating that school trips enable him barely to make ends meet.

Bargaining is portrayed as a skill which every Indian should possess. Those who have won a five-rupee bargain wear pride equivalent to having slapped a fastball over the boundary ropes. But I still don’t understand why they don’t do it in places which carry a tag, maybe because of the way equations are engraved in their minds, inversely proportional. 

P.S. My Friend Jaberson Roy who narrated the sad incident with the biscuit packet lives in Anna Nagar.

Photo Courtesy: (External Link)
Debajyoti Das